The Church of Ireland structure at the centre of the village of Caherconlish was built around 1770 and incorporated parts of an earlier medieval church. This small village belies a much larger imprint many years ago and was described by the antiquarian Samuel Lewis in 1837 as once being a walled town with four castles and ‘an extensive and celebrated college, every vestige of which has long since disappeared’, it is also recorded that the town had a drawbridge. The town is known in Irish as ‘Cathair Chinn-Lis’ which can translate as the ‘stone fort at the head of the lios’, a ‘lios’ being a ringfort or eathern fort. This shows that there was a pre-Norman origin for the settlement and it is recorded that construction of the castle was started in 1199 and was held by Theobald Walter de Botiller in 1214. The town was attacked and burned by Turlough O’Brien at some point between 1285-87 however it continued to be a wealthy town and was recorded in 1300 as one of the top four in Limerick assessed for taxation by Edward I. It is uncertain when the towns prominent structures such as the four castles and wall fell into ruin but the antiquarian TJ Westropp writing in 1904 said that the remains of the town’s fortified gate stood until 1826.

The earlier church was sketched by Thomas Dyneley in 1680 and is shown in ruins already at that time, it was then incorporated into the Church of Ireland Board of First Fruits structure in 1770. Like the majority of the churches erected by the board it is a simple single-cell nave with a crenelated octagonal tower. This church was only in use for just over 100 years, closing in 1871. The amount of burials that predate the Church of Ireland structure shows the antiquity of the site with multiple recorded graves from the 1660s including the Gabbett family vault beneath the church erected in 1670. Standing in the graveyard today at the centre of what is a relatively quiet village its hard to imagine the walled and fortified town that once stood here but the ruin of the church is a pleasant one all the same.

GPS: 52.59447, -8.47309